In recent years, the improvement of productivity by increasing working speed has been demanded in the production of liquid packaging bags such as retort pouches for food and infusion bags for medicine. Conventional vacuum suction grippers cannot sufficiently handle these packaging bags because they are soft in various shapes and sizes, and deform a lot due to inertial forces when transported at high speeds. Therefore, we developed a vacuum suction gripper equipped with a link mechanism to follow the deformation of packaging bags during transfer and to suppress the deformation. This adsorption gripper is designed to effectively convey flexible materials, and its effect on the conveying characteristics of flexible materials was investigated through experiments. The experimental results showed that the link mechanism was able to prevent flexible objects from falling. In particular, the results indicated that appropriate spring conditions can suppress the deformation of flexible objects during acceleration. These results are expected to contribute to improvements in the design and manufacturing process of vacuum suction grippers.

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is capable of achieving high-precision dimensions and surface roughness on high-hardness metallic materials, making it a critical process in mold manufacturing. EDM is well-suited for deep hole machining in high-hardness materials due to its low machining force. However, when using a commercial die-sinking EDM machine for deep hole machining, the process significantly slows down when the aspect ratio (L/D) exceeds 5. If the machining debris and gas bubbles present between the electrodes can be effectively removed, it is anticipated that deeper holes could be machined more efficiently. In this study, we investigate the use of specially designed electrode shapes for deep hole machining. It is expected that different electrode shapes will result in different behaviors of the bubbles and machining debris between the electrodes. To enhance the removal of bubbles and debris, it is crucial to understand the fluid flow between the electrodes. In this research, we conducted CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis to consider the impact of electrode shape on the flow between the electrodes. We report the findings on how electrode shape affects the flow of the machining fluid and the removal of bubbles between the electrodes.